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About Stephanie Zvan

Stephanie Zvan is the producer of The Humanist Hour podcast. She's also one of the hosts for the Minnesota Atheists' radio show and podcast, Atheists Talk. She speaks on science and skepticism in a number of venues, including science fiction and fantasy conventions.
Stephanie has been called a science blogger and a sex blogger, but if it means she has to choose just one thing to be or blog about, she's decided she's never going to grow up. In addition to science and sex and the science of sex, you'll find quite a bit of politics here, some economics, a regular short fiction feature, and the occasional bit of concentrated weird.
Oh, and arguments. She sometimes indulges in those as well. But I'm sure everything will be just fine. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

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A Note to Chill Girls and Queen Bees

How do you know whether you’re a chill girl? Simple. Is your reaction to complaints from other women of harassment and discrimination based on gender to turn to the guys and say, “Nah, I’m fine. It’s all cool”? Then you’re a chill girl.

How do you know whether you’re a queen bee? Simple. Did you struggle your way up to a position of power or influence in what was decidedly a man’s world, only to then turn around and tell other women that unless they can do what you did, they have to stay in their subservient positions? Then you’re a queen bee.

So, if you are a queen bee or a chill girl, pay attention. Start with this post by Colleen Doran. Doran has been through some rather nasty misogynistic crap, just for being a woman in comics. She has her own message for you.

But I like to think that things like stalking and harassment should be addressed and dealt with whenever we can, and to the best of our individual ability. I know that everyone has their limits, and not everyone can deal with directly addressing this problem. You should definitely pick your battles. But you’ll never win the war unless you fight sometime. Always keeping your head down, sticking to “the work” as if it will go away if you ever get the guts to look up, is not only harmful to you, it’s nothing like respect, and it enables the cycle of emotional violence to continue.

I’m going to disagree slightly with Doran here. If you want or need to keep your head down in order to survive or to do other important work (and you might be surprised at how much work I consider important), you get to do that. Not letting the bastards get you down a fight of its own. Its one worth winning, if that’s the fight you decide you can handle.

But that? That isn’t what you’re doing, you chill girls and queen bees. You’re not keeping your heads down and focusing on the work. You’re getting into the fight.

What is surprising is the side you’re choosing to fight on. You’re supporting the people who hurt you against the people trying to make the world a little easier for you.

And yes, I know that we’re fighting on your behalf as well as our own. I’ve heard you complain. In fact, your complaints about your own treatment frequently form the foundation for your claimed moral authority on these issues. “I’ve been groped/been constantly pestered/had someone’s tongue shoved down my throat/been raped/been ignored in favor of men/been discriminated against/been retaliated against/been called names/been harassed/been stalked/been threatened/been attacked and you don’t hear me complaining.”

Actually, that’s exactly what you’re doing. You’re telling me things happened to you that shouldn’t happen to anyone. Then you’re telling me I should put up with it just because you did.

No.

Then you’re telling other people they should fight against me just because you didn’t choose the same fight I did.

No.

Then you’re telling me there’s some kind of moral superiority in your choosing not to take on the harassment and additional pain of this fight.

No.

You don’t have to fight this fight. You can put your head back down and work. That’s a perfectly respectable choice. Sticking your head up from your work in order to fight to keep the world a lousy place? There’s nothing respectable in that. Or as Doran put it so well:

I like to think younger generations of women will not have to grow up armored assholes to deal with assholes, tossing off a crusty “Get over it!” every time a young girl gets groped at a con, or gets a barrage of rape threats on twitter. I prefer a world where men and women stand up and say, “This is not acceptable,” to a world where men and women chastise others to develop crocodile hides as if ugly words and ugly actions bounce off it.

It doesn’t. It just makes you ugly, too.

She’s right.

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About the author

Stephanie Zvan is the producer of The Humanist Hour podcast. She's also one of the hosts for the Minnesota Atheists' radio show and podcast, Atheists Talk. She speaks on science and skepticism in a number of venues, including science fiction and fantasy conventions.
Stephanie has been called a science blogger and a sex blogger, but if it means she has to choose just one thing to be or blog about, she's decided she's never going to grow up. In addition to science and sex and the science of sex, you'll find quite a bit of politics here, some economics, a regular short fiction feature, and the occasional bit of concentrated weird.
Oh, and arguments. She sometimes indulges in those as well. But I'm sure everything will be just fine. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

Roseanne handled all the bullshit really well, but she never decided that meant anyone who couldn’t was weak or stupid. Getting to the top did other weird things to her but she didn’t betray women. I think we can ask more of ‘queen bees’.

If you are a terrible person you are a Chill Girl, except if you are a different type of terrible in which case you’re a Queen Bee.

You see how specific I was? Only those two types of terrible. We all agree that terrible1 and terrible2 are terrible, so I think we can agree that my point has been made.

…

What’s that? People are being accused of being Chill Girls when really they just disagree with someone? Others are being called Queen Bees in similar circumstances.

Look. I only invented/codified/popularised these terms. I am not responsible for policing them.

But I’ll tell you something, when people complain that they are being unfairly branded, that “Chill girl” is being bandied about against all women who dare to disagree – whether or not they’re ‘Chill’ or disagree instead for other reasons, then I will absolutely slam them for lying about their obvious Chill-ness and then act like the pure definition, fairly applied, is the only one anyone uses.

If you want or need to keep your head down in order to survive or to do other important work (and you might be surprised at how much work I consider important), you get to do that. Not letting the bastards get you down a fight of its own. Its one worth winning, if that’s the fight you decide you can handle.

But that? That isn’t what you’re doing, you chill girls and queen bees. You’re not keeping your heads down and focusing on the work. You’re getting into the fight.

Exactly!

When I was a graduate student in chemistry in the late 80s, there seemed to be two kinds of women in the field: those who competed with other women for the rare female slots and those who helped other women to broaden our participation in the field. The funny thing is, as the numbers of female faculty grew, those of us who worked together started to outnumber those who didn’t. Thankfully, I don’t run into many queen bees in my area anymore.

Having said that, I do understand that many successful women who have sacrificed have a vested interest in considering that sacrifice worth it. I don’t agree with them, but I understand why that’s hard to let go.

After reading the above, it just hit home for me that I’ve been groped, constantly pestered, had someone’s tongue showed down my throat, been ignored in favour of men, been retaliated against, been called names, and been harassed, stalked, and threatened.

And for literally years I’ve just shrugged it off as something that happens to women.

Dairy, what on earth are you going on about? Stephanie made it quite clear that being a chill girl/queen bee isn’t about “disagreeing,” at least not disagreeing about politics or whatever. If you disagree with someone’s right to be hurt by something hurtful, then yes, you are a chill girl/queen bee. Not difficult.

You are not alone. I just wanted to say that. It is my experience that many girls and women who’ve endured sexual harassment and assault don’t necessarily make the connection from what happened to what it’s called. Harassment can be an abstract, even to those who have personally experienced it, when we’ve had our experiences totally invalidated, or have grown up being taught to invalidate them ourselves. I still struggle with calling my rape a rape because of the messages I have internalized, and I spent years getting external validation from therapists, teachers, and friends after the fact. Overcoming our programming, it’s hard, to say the least.

Well, jaggington, your misunderstanding then is that there’s anything glib about this at all. Queen Bee Syndrome was described for the first time nearly four decades ago. “Chill girl” is of more recent vintage, but it replaces terms that could be construed to be making statements about motivation when they’re simply meant to describe behavior and its effects.

Despite what your first comment seems to presume, labeling isn’t stereotyping. Think about what stereotyping actually is, and that becomes obvious. Labeling is simply a way of making discussion easier, so we don’t have to use so many words every time we refer to a phenomenon. We do it a lot. That’s why we have so such a large lexicon.

I do think that part of it is overcoming the constant invalidation of one’s experience, but I also think that part of it is a woman’s own unwillingness to consider herself a victim. As we’ve seen, even in the twenty-first century victims are being blamed for the crimes against them.

“But this is the way the industry is — it’s an industry for young guys, and it always will be.

Any woman who wants to survive in this business needs to get over herself, think of herself as one of the guys and get on with it. You can’t bring feminist crap into this. You’ll just get attacked. If you want to be attacked, well, fine. But if you want to work, give in, be one of the guys, respect them, respect yourself and don’t expect them to take care of you emotionally, because they won’t. That’s the advice I’d give to any woman who wants to get into this business now.”

Yes, sorry, I typed that from memory, and it’s true, mine only works for admins. When you’re logged in, there’s a bar along the top with “Howdy” and your display name on the right — hover over that and hit Edit My Profile.

I’m half-way there. Or I should say, I’m getting there. Not that I ever put up my head to keep the world a lousy place (although I may have done that in my younger days when I wanted to be ‘one of the guys’), but I’m starting to realize that I have a right to complain about the things that I find unacceptable – and that I should speak up about it. It takes an effort, because most of the time I still find myself trying to listen to that inner voice that says ‘No really, it’s nothing’, and accepting the fact that I can not-accept lousy behaviour is a difficult process. I’ve come to realize that there is no excuse for receiving lousy behaviour as the norm, no matter what I’m doing. Funny that it took me being slightly more immersed in the crap to realize this, rather than things getting better.
I’m getting there. And one day I will have the courage to be a LOUD complainer instead of dropping random, insinuating hints, like I currently do.
But boy, watching people react to those hints sure gets some interesting reactions…

@Snowy #7:
Seconded that you’re not alone.
It took me about 10 years to realize that the proper term for “things that guy did to me” is sexual assault. See, I’d been taught sexual assault was a synonym for rape, and assumed it covered nothing else. And then I was told, repeatedly, that it was nothing and I should let it go. I couldn’t, so the problem was me. Revictimization!

I think being unable to call things what they are and the presumption that people should let these supposed “little things” go leads to women feeling pressured to ignore more and more. I know it happened with me. Years later (and it took me years more to label it, too), I “let go” things that should have been called kidnapping, false imprisonment, and assault. When I, at long last, told my mother, she was horrified and asked, “Why would you think that’s ok?!” I didn’t. She had taught me to ignore my feelings and let sexual assault go; how was I to know where the point was that I should stop letting things go?

I think it’s altogether safer to call things what they are, no minimizing. Minimizing gets dangerous.

Be kind to yourself in your thinking. It can get trippy (and sickening), realizing what things in your past are really called. But it’ll get easier to recognize things in real-time and hopefully do something, even if it’s only being better to yourself, understanding you shouldn’t have to put up with such crap.

I had been taught about consent, sexual assault and rape, but they were things that happened in scary places, from violent strangers, right?

I mean sure, I was groped, fondled, jammed into corners and forcefully “kissed” on nights out, but that was normal, wasn’t it? And feeling dirty was just a side-effect of a night out, along with the hangover, yeah? And that guy who I’d been chatting with at a NYE house party, who grabbed me as I walked back into the living room, who pushed me on the couch and fucked me – I didn’t shout no, did I? He used a condom when I asked, and he didn’t hit me or anything. And I was drunk, and I maybe led him on by chatting for so long.

Anyway, I had to have sex for the first time eventually, so I probably should’ve been grateful, with a face like mine and a body to match it. Perhaps he’d done me a favour.

And then the “friend” I invited to stay at my parents’ after his suicide attempt, who grabbed me and stuck his tongue down my throat, saying “I wish you weren’t a lesbian, but they all say that to me” He was drunk and sad, poor thing. Then he confessed that his suicide attempt happened because he’d slept with my girlfriend when he visited her, and then she told him she didn’t want a relationship with him.

I still felt sorry for him. He was a Nice Guy, and he’d fancied her for a long time, and was upset when she chose me. So I was angry with her.

I thought all of it was normat, that life as a woman was just like that, and navigating the crowds of touchers, and feelers, and cat-callers. Just normal. I could cry for young me, and Snowy, and Mission and Beth, and all of us.

But I’ll tell you something, when people complain that they are being unfairly branded, that “Chill girl” is being bandied about against all women who dare to disagree – whether or not they’re ‘Chill’ or disagree instead for other reasons, then I will absolutely slam them for lying about their obvious Chill-ness and then act like the pure definition, fairly applied, is the only one anyone uses.

I’m glad you got that off your chest. NOw I’m trying to understand what you actually wanted to say but frankly, I got lost in your relative clauses and subordinates.
So, have some women been unfairly branded as “Chill girls”?
Maybe.
But what does it have to do with Stephanie’s post?
Do you disagree that it’s wrong to throw other women under the bus for the increased male approval?

It makes my head spin when I even start trying to enumerate all the incidents in my past that run the gamut from “harmless” objectification to full-on sexual assault. The worst (but not even close to the last) incident was a home invasion assault that only wasn’t a rape because of a little bit of quick thinking on my part and a LOT of luck. I was 19 years old. I called my mom to tell her what happened and she said “It’s the way you carry yourself. You walk like someone who is vulnerable, and that invites this sort of attention”.

It took years for me to even recognize how many such incidents I could legitimately put on this spectrum of sexist behavior, let alone absolve myself of the responsibility for ‘inviting it’. Happy to say that I’m out the other side now, trying to do better by my own kids.

“I’ve never experienced sexism because I don’t label all men as sexists.”

You realize that makes no sense, right? Try substituting:
I’ve never experienced any racism because I don’t label all white people as racists.
I’ve never experienced homophobia because I don’t label all straight people homophobes.

I’ve never had orange juice because I don’t label all juice as orange.

I really, REALLY think the important cause of wrestling with the phenomenon of women’s sexism and bargaining with patriarchy will never be served by cutesy high school nicknames.

It’s somewhat understandable to use these things in internal polemic, maybe, but treating terms like “chill girl” and “queen bee” as if it’s serious feminist theory is horrible. This is going to lead to nothing good. These are feel good buzzwords. And they’re designed to make “us” feel good.

Reminds me of the old “funfem,” only maybe worse in that it’s deliberately trivializing NON-feminist women we should be reaching out to and minds we should be changing. And even when it’s plain, frothing, pure sexist women, they deserve to be dealt with as adult, conscious sexists, not with diminutives and cute little gendered terms.

I’m starting to think feminism is being made for tumblr, anymore. Little buzzwords for the in crowd and young ones to throw around in their reblogs.

The underlying issues described are serious, and real, and when we mean that women need to look at how they see other women and how they’ve internalized sexism, we need to reach out to other women and discuss how they’ve internalized sexism. We need to deal with sexism in women with grown up terms, not cute little buzzphrases.

Full disclosure – I’m not “part” of the Atheism/Skeptic community, and thus am neutral on A+ and related issues, but I wish well to it, and to anybody fighting sexism and other oppressions within and without it.

But I really think this “chill girl” and “queen bee” thing is a step in the wrong direction for feminism of any stripe.

You understand that Queen Bee Syndrome has been in the scientific literature for 38 years, yes? And that I already mentioned this in a comment, yes? Thanks for deciding we’re working on the level of high school drama, though.

Yes, I DO know. And if this had been a sober assessment of that sort of literature, or even a snarky post that dealt with it, that would be a very different thing. Reducing queen bee syndrome to “are you a queen bee” doesn’t do that justice.

I’m tempted to ask about the mountains of scientific chill girl literature, but this is the point – The issues here are REAL. They need to be dealt with. They probably won’t be served by giving people gendered snappy names that will end up being thrown around as insults.

I don’t think you are intending to make this high school drama, but I do think it’s going to end up there, particularly on tumblr.

Anything can be taken out of context. You’re doing it now, for example. I’ve been writing for a long time on topics like this, at various levels of analysis. You’re only paying attention to this, which is directed at people doing some specific harm at the moment, and telling me it should be something other than what it is.

If you want something else, go write it. If it’s on Tumblr, it’ll be easier for people to link to than this is. That’ll solve your problem.

Well, yes. When you start throwing around gendered nicknames in a way I think is harmful, I will comment on that. I don’t need to be familiar with your entire body of work. I’m not doing this to disrespect you, or your feminism.

I think that’s pretty basic. I’m engaging as a feminist with what you said here, in this post.

Stephanie, I understand that we need a vocabulary to discuss these matters. Personally, I don’t like labelling people in this way but I recognise that we need terminology to discuss their damaging behaviours (and opinions). I also don’t like referring to adult women as “Girls”. If you label adults with damaging opinions and behaviours (or even just behaviours/opinions you do not like or agree with) as “Girls” or “Boys” then to me it reinforces a negative stereotype that young people’s opinions do not matter and it links the problem to ‘maturity’ rather than stupidity/ignorance/lack of empathy etc.

Guys, we have a problem. We are letting way too many boys get into adulthood without actually becoming men. We’re seeing more and more adult males around who are not men. They’re as old as men, but they have the mentality of nine-year-old boys. They’re causing a lot of trouble, both in general and for the game industry specifically. We need to deal with this.”

The problem is not about boys not becoming men. The behaviour being discussed is not acceptable from any person, child or adult.

I’m also still not clear on the specificity of “Chill Girl” – does it also apply to people who use the “It’s never happened to me so it doesn’t happen”/”that battle has been won so the war is over” tropes? I think these are quite different to “It happens to me but I’m cool with it”.

I don’t know how to link directly to a comment on the piece I’ve linked above at Jezebel, so I’ll quote a bit here from Cnith:

This is such a weird article for me, as a woman. I haven’t had any dude be mean or anything to me in the gaming world. Sure, they try to get into my pants, they might even go troll but if I don’t pay attention to them, how can they hurt me? I don’t get it.”

jaggington, “girl” is not about age except in as much as these are grown women who are “totally cool” with being called “girls” because making any kind of stink over that just isn’t being a fun person. That said, I’m not committed to the terminology. It was introduced by one of the chill girls just over a year ago and has stuck because, as I said, it was an improvement. Further improvements can always be made. I certainly don’t care about it enough to derail this into an argument over terminology.

As for that comment by Cnith, it does exactly the same thing I describe in the post. It describes specific bad behaviors, then blows them off. Follow up with the women using the other tropes you mention. Ask them whether any of the things I mention in the post have happened to them. Ask about them one at a time. I’ve yet to find one who actually denies having run into any of those. They’re not really saying these things don’t occur. They’re saying they’re not such a big deal that they can’t handle them.

Well, I certainly agree it’s going to be taken out of context on Tumblr, since she went and did that. Of course, it’s very easy to be a prophet under those circumstances. And I already agreed with her that it could be taken out of context.

I like to think younger generations of women will not have to grow up armored assholes to deal with assholes, tossing off a crusty “Get over it!” every time a young girl gets groped at a con, or gets a barrage of rape threats on twitter. I prefer a world where men and women stand up and say, “This is not acceptable,” to a world where men and women chastise others to develop crocodile hides as if ugly words and ugly actions bounce off it.

It doesn’t. It just makes you ugly, too.

She’s right.

Yes she is. (Re~?)Quoted for truth and support and because, hey, maybe, just maybe, if this is said enough times then it’ll finally sink in for those who haven’t grokked it yet..

This is such a weird article for me, as a woman. I haven’t had any dude be mean or anything to me in the gaming world. Sure, they try to get into my pants, they might even go troll but if I don’t pay attention to them, how can they hurt me? I don’t get it.”

Translation: It’s never happened to me, so what’s the big fucking deal? If it’s bothering you, it’s your own fault for not having a thick skin.

I can’t imagine the number of times I spouted similar idiocy when I was young and stupid and my ability to empathize with others didn’t extend to those outside my immediate sphere of experience, making it difficult to grasp that just because problems didn’t happen to ME it didn’t mean that they weren’t problems. Thankfully, I pulled my head out of my ass and started realizing that just because it doesn’t happen to ME it doesn’t mean there’s no problem, and that telling other women that “ignore the shit and it’ll go away” or that they just need to grow a thicker skin isn’t just not helping, it’s actively helping to perpetuate those problems. Not only is it victim blaming, it’s accepting that there’s nothing wrong with the status quo putting the onus on women to just “deal with it” rather than putting the onus on those being sexist to stop being sexist. Having to “deal with it” shouldn’t be the norm – gender equality and not having to deal with the shit caused by accepted, systemic sexism should be the norm.

Just because I earn more than my husband doesn’t mean that women as a group don’t still earn roughly 80% of what men earn, or that people of color don’t still earn less than whites for equal work (I’m not white, he is) – all the statistical evidence points to the continued existence of income inequality between women and men and whites and people of color. Just because I’ve never experienced direct sexism in my professional life, doesn’t mean that sexism in the workplace isn’t a systemic problem because again, all the evidence points to the contrary (and it varies by industry and workplace). All it means is that we’re statistical outliers in that regard.

I rather feel like the Queen Bee is often an older version of the Chill Girl, and I do think there is something to be said for youth going hand-in-hand with privilege much of the time. In the same way that children are instinctively self-centered and need to be taught to share and have empathy, so much of the teenage experience is about staking one’s claim to be themselves, and engaging in the sort of fierce self-preservation that often crosses over into willing disregard of others.

Empathy can unfortunately take a long time to be truly instilled in a person, and for some, it’s never fully realized.

” I do think there is something to be said for youth going hand-in-hand with privilege much of the time.”

But In fandom, as in atheism, the privileged aggressors are led by the Old Guard, but they’re calling young[er] fans who dont want to be pinched and molested and called names any more the “privileged” ones and blaming it in Spoiled Kids These Days with their Self Esteem and their Helicopter Parents…..then wondering why all the kids are getting off their lawns and going off to do their own thing someplace else like A+ or Wiscon or forward-thinking cons like CONvergence….best addressed by writing articles on “The Graying of Fandom” instead of, maybe, LISTENING to why people are leaving/staying away.

personally, the most entitled assholes i have ever dealt with in 30 years of retail and customer service, as employers or as customers, have all been significantly older than myself. THe most jerkass teenager has nothing on a guy or gal who has gotten their way for the past 20-30-40-50 years due to their money and/or social status!! and obviously they didnt learn it from modern “helicopter Parents” and Self-esteem based education theories.

in fact many of them brag about how their own parents would “belt them across the face” for talking out of turn and their teachers would paddle them for asking questions….i almost think this Queen Bee mentality is related to envy—how dare you whippersnappers get away with suffering less than I did?!)

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Sgaile-beairt – I think it’s more of “it’s finally MY turn”-ism. For example, hazing in fraternities. Why does it persist, when the new crop clearly hates it? Oh, because if they put up with it, they’ll get to do as bad or worse to the NEXT crop of noobs and the ones after that! And we see this ever-worsening trend resulting in deaths sometimes. Same with parenting – children who were abused by their own parents typically grow into parents who abuse their own children, all the while insisting “I was spanked and I turned out fine.” And far too often, these products of the endless chain of “it’s finally MY turn” end up beating their own children to death. Even once is too often. So the Queen Bees put up with all sorts of crap on their way into positions of power and influence, and now it’s THEIR turn. So we will not be changing the rules of the game now, because they had to work so HARD and put up with SO MUCH to get to where they are! If we change the rules, those who have an easier time of it will not appreciate just how HARD the Queen Bee had to work to get there, and she’ll lose her prestige. So no changes O_O

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